Every bedroom should have a smoke alarm, Alberta fire officials say

Alberta fire officials are urging people to put smoke alarms in every bedroom in their home.

Starting in May 2016, new homes will be required to have smoke alarms wired into each bedroom.

But provincial fire safety officer Ross Bennett is urging people with older homes to install them as well.

Bennett says people can sleep through smoke detectors that go off in another part of the house.

"Most of the fatalities and fire injuries occur between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.," he said. "And one of the stats that we do know is last year we had 2,000 fires in homes without smoke alarms."

Bennett said 18 people died in about 10,000 house fires in Alberta last year.

Two thousand of those homes did not have a smoke detector.